The world of talent and work seemingly reinvents itself frequently. Changes in the global economy amidst other major worldly events (including, of course, a pandemic) routinely force businesses to reimagine how they get work done. Over the past decade, the workforce management tech marketplace, which includes Vendor Management Systems (VMS), Managed Service Providers (MSP), digital staffing marketplaces, direct sourcing automation, etc. has undergone a seismic revolution alongside a shifting global talent economy. Throw in the major workforce management shifts accelerated due to a global pandemic and its economic, digital, and staffing ramifications, and, well, the position is clear: workforce management technology has to evolve just as quickly as the world around it.

Last year, veteran VMS/MSP hybrid PRO Unlimited announced that Kevin Akeroyd would join the solution as its new CEO, who immediately touted a transformative approach to the provider’s future: become a de-facto “platform” for contingent and agile workforce management.

“This workforce segment is becoming a large spend category and is now an enterprise valuation driver. Over the past 30 years, the industry has transformed from a small temp-staffing niche to a C-suite strategic priority. This shift not only includes changes within HR, talent acquisition and strategic procurement programs, but also highlights an explosion of innovation and new technology platforms like we have never seen before,” Akeroyd said. “Unfortunately, the established procurement/spend management and HCM platforms have not addressed the full contingent workforce management lifecycle. Furthermore, they are not capable of managing its complexity or harnessing the data to provide analytics and intelligence on companies’ contingent workforce segments that executives demand. The industry requires a comprehensive platform that can deliver the technology, data/analytics and managed services to optimize the full contingent workforce program. This is going to help organizations exceed both their contingent workforce goals and their broader organizational objectives. Being the platform that seamlessly interoperates with ERP, HCM, HRIS, P2P, and data and analytics systems will be paramount, and PRO Unlimited is uniquely positioned to become that holistic platform for the industry.”

Shortly after Kevin dropped by the Contingent Workforce Weekly podcast and spoke to us as part of our Future of Work Influencer series, PRO announced that it acquired rate management solution PeopleTicker, a global provider of comprehensive compensation data that relies on crowdsourced intelligent, machine learning, and data science resources. This acquisition helped burgeon PRO’s commitment to helping its users manage its workforce with a data-driven approach, allowing customers to tap into an “ocean of data.”

“To use an age-old analogy, even the best motorcycle, car, plane, rocket ship… simply is not effective if you don’t “fuel” it.  And the higher quality, higher octane the fuel is, the better performing the vehicle is. Data is today’s “fuel,” said Akeroyd. “Having the highest quality, highest coverage, most up-to-date data is a mission-critical component of the platform. It fuels the software, service, and analytics/intelligence offering the Enterprise relies on today. PRO not only has the largest, broadest, most accurate first-party asset in the world, we have augmented this with third-party data partnerships, including our acquisition of data assets like PeopleTicker, the industry’s one true provider of global contingent rate data for over 160 markets across thousands of job titles. Having exclusive data, packaged with PRO’s solutions and comprehensive platform, will enable and benefit our clients immensely. And competitively, it will further differentiate PRO from our point solution competitors. Finally, data is the fundamental underpinning of all machine-based learning (MBL) and artificial intelligence (AI). We are very excited to deliver MBL/AI applications in the near future as a result of having the best, most accurate and largest training data sets on the planet.”  

And, PRO Unlimited’s transformation continues today with an announcement that it has secured an exclusive partnership with Eightfold, an artificial intelligence solution that offers a multifaceted blend of technology, including talent experience management, candidate comparison and evaluation, bias prevention, and deep employee lifecycle management support via AI-led neural networks.

The new partnership has massive implications for the workforce management solutions landscape, as PRO’s exclusive union with Eightfold will allow the veteran provider the ability to “lift and shift” comprehensive total talent intelligence into its existing and forthcoming offerings. For example, Eightfold’s unique neural network-led skills data could be applied to direct sourcing initiatives to better target specific, high-expertise candidates for enterprise talent pools.

“Many organizations around the world will be hiring contingent workers ahead of the economic recovery while prioritizing areas within hiring, such as retention and D&I initiatives. However, many of these same companies do not have the technology and data in place to identify, engage and secure the best contingent talent in the world, while attaining diversity goals,” said Akeroyd. “This exclusive partnership with Eightfold aims to solve this problem with their advanced talent intelligence and our contingent workforce management platform, which also includes the world’s largest global market rate data repository. This partnership is truly a game changer for the industry as it will transform how our customers, which include some of the largest brands globally, source, develop, and redeploy their workforces while lowering costs as well as offer an unparalleled suite of diversity offerings for the contingent workforce.”

With PRO’s new Direct Sourcing and SOW Management tools on the horizon for later this quarter, the solution’s recent, aggressive moves prove that the provider is truly committed not only to its goal of being a centralized talent management platform, but also meeting the evolving requirements of the ever-changing world of talent and work.